After discovering Bitcoin, elementary music teachers can see that some bad parenting habits are encouraged by the fiat system.
This is an editorial opinion by Tim Niemeyer, co-host of the Lincolnland Bitcoin Meetup and elementary school teacher.
I’m a teacher by day and a rabid Bitcoiner by night. I currently teach elementary school music, and I really love the job. It’s similar to being a co-host of Lincolnland Bitcoin because I get to share my passion (music and Bitcoin) while potentially helping others develop a deeper appreciation and better understanding. I didn’t take the orange pill at school though; I think it is necessary to separate church and state, if you will. Still, being able to experience both at the same time has helped me develop a greater understanding.
But appreciating Bitcoin has also given me a unique perspective in my work as a teacher, and I wanted to share some of the observations I have made in almost twenty years as an educator about how coercive our fiat monetary system is less-than-optimal incentives. decision making and substandard relational habits… and maybe a little bit about how Bitcoin fixes this.
The purpose of this article is not to badmouth any particular group or subset of the population (maybe Fiat politicians though, lol). Most everyone has a justification for their actions, and who am I talking to? For what it’s worth, I believe the majority of parents are good, hard-working people who do the best with what they have to provide. It is not their fault that they are forced into a monetary system that steals time and effort through inflation, which forces them to act on high time options. Many do not see the benefits that we see Bitcoiners to sound money that is not controlled by the whims of those in power who have their own agenda and incentives. Furthermore, very few see that choosing red or blue or right or left does not really provide long-term, systemic change due to the fact that each side is beholden to the default system.
Should we?
His parents’ helicopter
One observation I’ve noticed over the past few decades is the emergence of helicopter parents. WebMD lists the following signs of helicopter parenting: they fight child battles, do schoolwork, train coaches, keep their kids on a short leash, be their own housekeeper, play it safe and can’t let their kids down. fail.
I believe most of this is a byproduct of living in a fiat system. If you have a system that allows humans to control the money supply, then they will impose morals on that money supply. Regardless of the intent, the resulting societal byproduct is a pull-pull system where each party offers to solve the other’s problems for their constituents. This leads to a paternalistic dynamic between the powerful and the powerless classes.
Politicians who try to gain more power do so by “fighting their children’s war” or the war of the powerless. They “train their trainers” by mandating more workplace requirements. They “keep their children on a short leash” by constantly trying to limit their freedom. They don’t “let their kids fail” by providing them with a huge safety net, which leads to healthy risk reduction and increased satisfaction. This helicopter modeling by Big Daddy becomes a learned behavior by the lowly public, who models it for their children, creating a vicious cycle of dependency.
Snowflake Kids
Helicopter parenting leads to snowflake children. Tifa Ong describes snowflake children as emotional, sensitive and entitled. My concern about emotional and sensitive children is only because they do not have enough opportunities to fight their own battles and, at worst, get used to the process, and, at best, learn from it.
In my classroom, I (as well as many of my colleagues) teach “fail forward” where students are encouraged to take risks in order to learn from them and establish good habits to be persistent learners. It’s like when they are preparing for a musical performance… many students are nervous or have stage fright. My stock answer is that the only way to overcome it is to do it over and over again until the feeling becomes familiar; unfamiliarity is a source of anxiety.
Unfortunately, students who spend only a fraction of the time practicing fail to progress. It is quite easy to see which students have the opportunity to take risks and which do not. I believe that those who do not yet have that skill are the children of helicopter parents, parents who are more affected by systemic fiat externalities. When too many hedges are put in place, children are not only unwilling but unable to take risks. They feel they should be given everything life has to offer without having to work for it. I believe this sense of entitlement is the result of unintended consequences of fiat.
The Fiat system allows for a top-down control system, which incentivises grown adults to suckle from the teat of the powerful, which diminishes their own authority and agency, which leads to a hierarchy of demand at the top end of the structure to provide the bottom. finally, which leads to children having the right without a proper role model to show how to provide for themselves. The end result is a pattern of unlearning, which stems from us outsourcing our autonomy over the monetary system to equally flawed humans.
If only there was a monetary system that simply acted like a globally connected, permissionless ledger – a ledger that no one controlled and everyone had access to. One that does not impose a moralistic hierarchy but incentivizes voluntary cooperation. If only…
The Proof Is In The Pudding
In the short five years in Bitcoin, I have noticed a complete shift change in how I parent. Truth street: I was a helicopter parent for my children’s formative years. While I may not be as far off the spectrum as some, I am susceptible to many of the characteristics discussed earlier. I was quick to fight the fight, stay on a short leash, play it safe and don’t fail.
But that all changed when I started learning Bitcoin (notice I didn’t say “buy bitcoin”). Developing lower time preferences led me to see the benefits of allowing my children to learn from their mistakes; It’s not so much how they feel here and now but how they will be able to deal with the future struggle already having the opportunity to experience conflict… provided there is proper support. I experienced a change for the better in terms of my own autonomy, which gave my children role models to grow into the best versions of themselves. This is actually better than the direction it dictates, thus fostering a dependency on disconnected democracy.
The more we control our decision-making and willpower, the less we each have to lead future generations. Bitcoin allows all voluntary participants to opt out of the nonsense they have allowed themselves to become accustomed to. Bitcoin incentivizes us to work hard to achieve our long-term goals, respect each other’s autonomy, take calculated risks and normalize our efforts in the face of possible failure. Bitcoin incentivizes rationality and logical thinking and disincentivizes emotions and excessive oversensitivity. By choosing to live in a system that values value over time and value for value, Bitcoin obliterates the concept of entitlement. Of course, there are many other factors that contribute to all of this, but money touches every aspect of society. The lifestyle associated with Bitcoin excels in developing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs towards self-actualization. The fiat mind, by comparison, is just basic.
This is a guest post by Tim Niemeyer. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.